ABSTRACT
We raise this point not to criticize the conference organizers, but to raise an underlying theme of our chapter: visual methods of presenting historical research are a legitimate, and not a secondary, tool for historical interpretation. As Caroline Knowles and Paul Sweetman have noted, ‘Visual methods provide an alternative means of formulating, conducting and disseminating research, and – more particularly – a productive and evocative means of uncovering and demonstrating links
a lesser alternative, simply different. Text and images taken together, as we will argue in this chapter, can have a particular kind of effect. ‘When experienced social scientists who are also skilled photographers aim to produce images which have both documentary reach and aesthetic quality, these can – in combination with verbal text – generate a type of social science understanding which is very rich’ (Chaplin 1994: 221-2). We would argue further that, through text and images, historians can tell a historical narrative, in this case, a ‘narrative of deindustrialization’. What emerges is a ‘dialogue’ between the words (written analysis and/or oral history text) and photographs, in which neither medium is privileged but rather both build collectively to tell a cohesive narrative. Through this kind of intertextuality between text and images, historians, sociologists and documentarians can gain particular insights and create new kinds of knowledge and understanding.
